The new site has a new feature 'Community News'. This is something I put in the site design from the start but never discussed as there was no process.
For those that try to follow the "processes thingy" I'm doing.. I'm going to follow the Patch process (see 2.2) this time as it resembles the current situation most.
So I would like you to look at the dev. env. and look at the entry (index) and news page.
There is a 'Community News' section that is linked to this forum on the messageboard.
My idea is to allow ->everybody<- with a forum account to post there. the only limitation is that topics only show up on the entry and news pages after 5 and 2,5 hours respectively.
In that time inappropriate posts can be deleted or moved but it requires moderators to follow the creation of new topics closely as after 5 hours it ends up on the entry page for all to see.
The 'Project News' would be the same as the News section as we have it at this moment, (only a few devs can post new topics).
I have written no technical documentation for these news things yet but it's in essence the same as with the current site.
Anyway, as it's functional in the dev. env. please try it out and give feedback on the idea itself and/or the implementation.
Site: Community News
Moderator: Moderators
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clericvash
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Tim Blokdijk
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Is a "mod que" already existing functionality of phpbb? It could quite well exist as I don't know about phpbb all that much.
I personally like the "check later" approach as it has a low barrier. And I also like to 'reward' the people that actively track the forum to get the community news a few hours before the rest. This allows a discussion about the news topic to develop. A moderator can also make a more informed decision to remove something when forum regulars give some feedback about the topic. And it removes the need for an available moderator for a news item to get trough.
Buttt.. "check first" should work to.
I personally like the "check later" approach as it has a low barrier. And I also like to 'reward' the people that actively track the forum to get the community news a few hours before the rest. This allows a discussion about the news topic to develop. A moderator can also make a more informed decision to remove something when forum regulars give some feedback about the topic. And it removes the need for an available moderator for a news item to get trough.
Buttt.. "check first" should work to.
Set ti up as 2 forums.
Proposed items and official items. Things that are proposed can eb mvoed by an admin ro mdoerator to teh foficial.
Otherwise fi the moderators don't catch that thread after 2.5 hours (and we do have lots fo times were there are no active mdoerators for as long as 10 hours) we could have porn on the frontpage.
Proposed items and official items. Things that are proposed can eb mvoed by an admin ro mdoerator to teh foficial.
Otherwise fi the moderators don't catch that thread after 2.5 hours (and we do have lots fo times were there are no active mdoerators for as long as 10 hours) we could have porn on the frontpage.
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Tim Blokdijk
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That would work to I guess.
I don't like it that a moderator needs to do something before it shows up, if you release a new version of your mod then I would presume you like to have some guarantee that your release messages show up. Independent of some volatile 'moderator' factor. Now the "Latest community news" on the current site also works without involvement from moderators. I can also change the time to 24 hours or something it's not a fixed number.
I'm going to pm SwiftSpear, I like to know his view about this.
I don't like it that a moderator needs to do something before it shows up, if you release a new version of your mod then I would presume you like to have some guarantee that your release messages show up. Independent of some volatile 'moderator' factor. Now the "Latest community news" on the current site also works without involvement from moderators. I can also change the time to 24 hours or something it's not a fixed number.
I'm going to pm SwiftSpear, I like to know his view about this.
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
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- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
So basically the idea is someone posts to the forum, which then displays the post on the front page?
If you're going to do it, do it the way AF suggested... IE, basically just have someone trusted who reads the posts, and manually moves them from the que forum to the forum where the post is front paged. There is no official structure to create these sections, but it's very easy to jury rig them up using forum privileges and user groups.
If there is no moderation gap I can just see things like frontpaged porn, and "oh hey, smoth made a gundam release announcement, lets spam it off the frontpage real quick!" As things went on we could give certain trusted content authors the ability to directly post content news, to decrease the workload on the mods trying to parse the other news elements.
I don't think it should ever be fully public. It's good enough that the forums are basically public, it's a bad idea for the front page to be as well. If it were fully public I think the vast majority of news probably wouldn't even be remotely news worthy.
If you're going to do it, do it the way AF suggested... IE, basically just have someone trusted who reads the posts, and manually moves them from the que forum to the forum where the post is front paged. There is no official structure to create these sections, but it's very easy to jury rig them up using forum privileges and user groups.
If there is no moderation gap I can just see things like frontpaged porn, and "oh hey, smoth made a gundam release announcement, lets spam it off the frontpage real quick!" As things went on we could give certain trusted content authors the ability to directly post content news, to decrease the workload on the mods trying to parse the other news elements.
I don't think it should ever be fully public. It's good enough that the forums are basically public, it's a bad idea for the front page to be as well. If it were fully public I think the vast majority of news probably wouldn't even be remotely news worthy.
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Tim Blokdijk
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And with a x hour delay.SwiftSpear wrote:So basically the idea is someone posts to the forum, which then displays the post on the front page?
It's always an option to do it like this.SwiftSpear wrote: If you're going to do it, do it the way AF suggested... IE, basically just have someone trusted who reads the posts, and manually moves them from the que forum to the forum where the post is front paged. There is no official structure to create these sections, but it's very easy to jury rig them up using forum privileges and user groups.
The porn and "spam something off the frontpage thing" can be countered with the time delay and we would need guidelines about what is ok to post.SwiftSpear wrote:If there is no moderation gap I can just see things like frontpaged porn, and "oh hey, smoth made a gundam release announcement, lets spam it off the frontpage real quick!" As things went on we could give certain trusted content authors the ability to directly post content news, to decrease the workload on the mods trying to parse the other news elements.
The thing with needing "posting" rights is that it would make "Community News" more or less redundant, "Project News" is intended to be for the news of the (trusted) developers (both content & code so Smoth would make a Gundam release announcement in project news). I like the "Community News" to be there to show that the community is alive and all sorts of things are going on. Like those "recent posts" things you see at some sites. It would prevent the situation where there is nothing new to read on the entry page for months on end.
The "newsworthy" thing is a good point, I don't know, I dislike the the current system (no official news for months and a wiki based open system without any real moderation), but what's a better system..SwiftSpear wrote: I don't think it should ever be fully public. It's good enough that the forums are basically public, it's a bad idea for the front page to be as well. If it were fully public I think the vast majority of news probably wouldn't even be remotely news worthy.
Would you be willing to try out a public system like I suggest? And see how things go, if it's not working then I promise to fix it into a more "moderateable" system.
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
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- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
To clarify. The system I describe is not private, it's basically the same system you describe, except instead of a time delay before a post is up that a moderator has to moderate the post in the mean time, the moderator just moves the content acceptable post to another private forum section that instantly feeds up. The forum section is private in that a user can't post directly into the section, but PHPBB allows a topic belonging to any poster to be moved into any other forum section with no restrictions, providing the user moving the post has the correct user rights.
It's more reliable to have a moderated system where a moderator basically presses an OK button to let the post feed than to have a system where rain or shine the post will display in one hour and the moderator has to review it and decide against axing it in the mean time, plus it probably creates less PHP code. Additionally, assuming we have enough staff with access to post approval the delay time before a new news announcement goes live is probably MUCH lower than an hour on a staff reviewed system.
If one factor alone makes me sure the approval system is better it's the fact that if there is no chance of a sketchy post going public without a moderator viewing it first and making the final call, there is much less temptation to try to sneak stuff in. If I know that there is the possibility of a moderator just not having a chance to review a post before it's up than I, as an elite script kiddie, am more likely to try to push the limits of what's acceptable for news posting.
Additionally we don't have to create restrictions or punishments for users incorrectly feeding to the news forum, we just ignore an improperly designed post. There is no way someone trying to spam the forum can make more work for moderators, the post will just remain dead in a queue and never require any moderation action on it. Whereas the time delay system, if user spends an hour making 300 posts to the news page, I have to ban the user, and then manually delete each post one by one before the hour passes and the post goes live to the front page. MAJOR hassle, since only 1-2 admins have banning access, where as I can give any moderator the right to move a post from the queue forum to the live post forum.
If you're not familiar with PHPBB moderation stuff, no worries, I don't have a problem setting it up for you. Basically just code a forum section where every post feeds to the front page the way you want it to, I'll do everything else with user groups and posting rights to make it work the way I describe. It's not a complicated system.
It's more reliable to have a moderated system where a moderator basically presses an OK button to let the post feed than to have a system where rain or shine the post will display in one hour and the moderator has to review it and decide against axing it in the mean time, plus it probably creates less PHP code. Additionally, assuming we have enough staff with access to post approval the delay time before a new news announcement goes live is probably MUCH lower than an hour on a staff reviewed system.
If one factor alone makes me sure the approval system is better it's the fact that if there is no chance of a sketchy post going public without a moderator viewing it first and making the final call, there is much less temptation to try to sneak stuff in. If I know that there is the possibility of a moderator just not having a chance to review a post before it's up than I, as an elite script kiddie, am more likely to try to push the limits of what's acceptable for news posting.
Additionally we don't have to create restrictions or punishments for users incorrectly feeding to the news forum, we just ignore an improperly designed post. There is no way someone trying to spam the forum can make more work for moderators, the post will just remain dead in a queue and never require any moderation action on it. Whereas the time delay system, if user spends an hour making 300 posts to the news page, I have to ban the user, and then manually delete each post one by one before the hour passes and the post goes live to the front page. MAJOR hassle, since only 1-2 admins have banning access, where as I can give any moderator the right to move a post from the queue forum to the live post forum.
If you're not familiar with PHPBB moderation stuff, no worries, I don't have a problem setting it up for you. Basically just code a forum section where every post feeds to the front page the way you want it to, I'll do everything else with user groups and posting rights to make it work the way I describe. It's not a complicated system.
Long story short, No. It's too contrary to the way PHPBB works to moderate that system effectively.Would you be willing to try out a public system like I suggest?
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Tim Blokdijk
- Posts: 1242
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Ok, I will remove the delay stuff from the code.
When you have some time, can you set up the board like you need it in the dev. env?
http://newspring.clan-sy.com/messageboard/ User account details can be found in the "accounts" sticky in General Discussion.
[EDIT]Login has a bug in it but it should register your session anyway.[/EDIT]
When you have some time, can you set up the board like you need it in the dev. env?
http://newspring.clan-sy.com/messageboard/ User account details can be found in the "accounts" sticky in General Discussion.
[EDIT]Login has a bug in it but it should register your session anyway.[/EDIT]
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
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clericvash
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Tim Blokdijk
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- Joined: 29 May 2005, 11:18
Ummm, ok I will look into it but I don't have a lot of time for it today so it could take a few days before it's fixed.SwiftSpear wrote:The login bug seems to be preventing me access to the administration panel through the administrator1 account.
@j5mello
I don't like the randomness, I like the tekst to be informative not only as an indication that people are writing on the messageboard.
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Tim Blokdijk
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Current Spring website, http://spring.clan-sy.com, already has a community new tab on the frontpage, but about no one use it, despite having no moderation nor time delay.
Have you analysed why it's so unused, to make sure your new community news thing doesn't end the same way?
Have you analysed why it's so unused, to make sure your new community news thing doesn't end the same way?
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Tim Blokdijk
- Posts: 1242
- Joined: 29 May 2005, 11:18
I'm trying to get that analysis down in this topic, so any feedback is welcome. 
The limitations of the current community news seem to be:
- You can only post an one-liner among a wall of text that is the entry page.
- There is no topic linked to the news so people can't discuss the news.
- It's wiki based and not that user friendly,
- People don't know about it.
- The entry page is not really "used" by the Spring community for anything.
Now I don't actually make use of the news function on the current site (I never posted news) so I like to have input from people like you (content dev.) on how it should work.
The new site as I'm working on it at this moment has three way's to update the text on the entry page, all based on the forum.
There is "Highlight", "Community" and "Project" news.
Highlight is more or less still the community news we have in the current site only limited to one not three entries. Also only developers can update it.
Project and Community news is the same as "developer news" in the current site only my idea is that developers (code & content) post in Project news, all other people that like to report something use the community news.
The limitations of the current community news seem to be:
- You can only post an one-liner among a wall of text that is the entry page.
- There is no topic linked to the news so people can't discuss the news.
- It's wiki based and not that user friendly,
- People don't know about it.
- The entry page is not really "used" by the Spring community for anything.
Now I don't actually make use of the news function on the current site (I never posted news) so I like to have input from people like you (content dev.) on how it should work.
The new site as I'm working on it at this moment has three way's to update the text on the entry page, all based on the forum.
There is "Highlight", "Community" and "Project" news.
Highlight is more or less still the community news we have in the current site only limited to one not three entries. Also only developers can update it.
Project and Community news is the same as "developer news" in the current site only my idea is that developers (code & content) post in Project news, all other people that like to report something use the community news.
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Tim Blokdijk
- Posts: 1242
- Joined: 29 May 2005, 11:18
I'm replying here as it's specifically about this topic.
I will remove it sometime this week, ok?
It's 5 hours for the entry (index) page, 2 and a half for the news page.SwiftSpear wrote:How long is the delay time before a news item posts from the community news to the frontage? Can it be removed please?
I will remove it sometime this week, ok?
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
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- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
I uncovered a couples bugs while playing a little more today. Basically I'm more convinced than ever that mostly handling frontpage posting permissions through PHP access controls is the best way to do it. Basically moderators will just move all queued threads that are valid news to the frontpage, where after they are moved, they can be freely commented on, but only edited or deleted by moderation.
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clericvash
- Posts: 1394
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I'm pretty sure that is what my suggestion was earlier in this thread...SwiftSpear wrote:I uncovered a couples bugs while playing a little more today. Basically I'm more convinced than ever that mostly handling frontpage posting permissions through PHP access controls is the best way to do it. Basically moderators will just move all queued threads that are valid news to the frontpage, where after they are moved, they can be freely commented on, but only edited or deleted by moderation.
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Tim Blokdijk
- Posts: 1242
- Joined: 29 May 2005, 11:18
Bugs? In my code?SwiftSpear wrote:I uncovered a couples bugs while playing a little more today. Basically I'm more convinced than ever that mostly handling frontpage posting permissions through PHP access controls is the best way to do it. Basically moderators will just move all queued threads that are valid news to the frontpage, where after they are moved, they can be freely commented on, but only edited or deleted by moderation.
I only know about the bugs in the phpbb code parser as I used the code from the current site.What are "PHP access controls"? As I understand the discussion until now you like to use phpbb for access control. Is that a typo and do you mean phpbb?
Another question, why not allow people to comment on news before it's moved?
Moderators don't know everything and that would allow people to point out inaccuracies in the news postings before they end up on the frontpage.?